


The North Avengers

by KitSolent



Category: Game of Thrones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-01-05 20:45:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 19,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18373763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KitSolent/pseuds/KitSolent
Summary: After the events of Season 7, a mysterious stranger arrives in Westeros. He is clad head-to-toe in strange armour and speaks with a foreign accent that nobody can seem to place. Though he is desperate to return to his own world, after a chance meeting this mysterious stranger is revealed to be no stranger to Westeros at all, and he soon embarks upon a new mission, one of vengeance.The North will be Avenged, with help from Ned Stark's long lost brother, Tony.





	1. Oh, Snap.

**Author's Note:**

> I know what you're thinking, what with only a few days to go before Season 8, and two weeks before Endgame.
> 
> This is the _perfect_ time to write a 10K+ crack fic based solely on the fact that the most popular superhero franchise of all time and one of the most popular TV shows of all time both have Starks in them. Let's do this.
> 
> Also, I'd just like to point out that I haven't read any of the comics or books that these two worlds were based on. This fic is purely film and TV inspired. What can I say? I'm a visual learner.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the Snap, Tony Stark and Nebula are the only ones left on Titan. Together, they try to find a way off Thanos' dead homeworld, and reunite with the remaining Avengers.

Anthony Stark's favourite part of Winterfell Castle was the blacksmith's. A boy of only six, he was too young yet to join his older brothers as they trained with swords and bows, and his father Rickard was always so busy being the Lord of Winterfell that he barely had any time left for his youngest son. The blacksmith and his apprentices, however, would often let him sit and watch them work after his lessons with Maester Walys. Tony learned about the different types of iron and steel, and how they could be forged into tools and weapons and armour. He asked the blacksmith once if he could make him his own suit of armour, but he was told he would grow out of it too quickly. Still, he imagined himself one day, a brave knight, fighting for good alongside his brothers Brandon, Ned and Benjen.

\---

"He did it."

Quill and Drax were gone. Strange was gone. Peter was gone. Tony and Nebula were the only ones left on Titan.

After a long silence, Nebula rose to her feet. "We need to get out of here."

"We can't. We don't have a ship, and we can't call for help. We're stuck here." Tony sighed.

Nebula looked around at the dead alien city that surrounded them. It was still hard to believe that this had once been a lush homeworld. Thanos' birthplace. "I have an idea," She said, "Follow me." and started walking.

Given a choice between dying alone and dying with someone else, Tony would have preferred to die alone. But some small part of him, deep down, still held an iota of hope. A one in 14'000'605 chance that things might eventually turn out okay. He rose unsteadily to his feet.

\---

"What did it cost?"

"Everything."

Half of all life in the universe had melted away at his command. He looked at the Infinity Gauntlet, the Stones still shining. Today, their name had truly been tested, and though his gauntlet was now cracked and smouldering, the Stones themselves had not dimmed their shine one bit.

And now, thanks to the Infinity Stones, Titan, his home planet, had been restored to its former glory. He was standing outside a shepherd's cabin in a valley near where he'd won control of the Time Stone. Green grass covered every inch of the valley floor, and the sky above was a calm blue again. Over on the other side of the valley were snow-capped mountains, and beyond them stood Titan's capital city, a sprawling metropolis home to ten million citizens. A lifeless battleground mere minutes before, Thanos imagined it was now bustling with people, his people, going about their daily lives in peace, thanks to him. He flexed his fingers inside the gauntlet and immediately he was teleported inside the city. The people turned to look at him. After a moment, they all started running to him, wordlessly touching him and smiling. Titan's saviour. As news of his arrival spread, great cheers went up throughout the city, and the crowd followed him as he made his way to the heart of the capital.

\---

Nebula was leading Tony deeper into the ruins of the city. They were surrounded on all sides by heaps of twisted metal, the ruins of mighty skyscrapers. Dust blew around their ankles as they marched on down the central street until they came to an empty square. Nebula pointed to the remains of a building on their left. "That was the science centre. Thanos had a workshop there. He told me about it once."

The building was barely more than a heap of rubble. Creeping through the partially-collapsed front entrance, Tony looked at Nebula pleadingly. "Please tell me this isn't just for nostalgia's sake."

Nebula looked around for a second before she replied. "I've never been here before in my life. This way." She gestured to a small stairwell in the corner of the atrium.

Tony's suit was still in 'Deep Repair Mode' following their fight with Thanos, but the nanobots that weren't critically damaged were just able to manage a light for them to see by as they descended. "I'm not going to be able to shift any rubble, by the way."

"That's okay, I'm relatively unharmed." She said, jerking her bad shoulder to see how much pain she'd be in if she had to use it.

"I guess your dad must've been pulling his punches, eh?"

"He never pulled his punches." She replied. "Not once." She wouldn't make eye contact after that, and Tony got the feeling she wasn't only referring to their last fight.

At the bottom of the stairwell, several levels below ground, they came to a cavernous basement room. Machines and tool stations were dotted around, and in the centre on a raised platform stood an ominous-looking machine connected to cables.

"This is it. That thing in the middle is a teleporter. We need to get it working, can you do that without your fancy suit?"

\---

The Elders of Titan had all assembled in the main square by the time Thanos got there. They thanked him for his service, and apologised for exiling him long ago. They also informed him that his daughter was waiting for him. Thanos looked left towards the science centre and Gamora was standing in the doorway.

She seemed happy to see him, which was surprising considering that the last time they saw each other he'd thrown her off a cliff.

"Daughter. You're back." He smiled, and Gamora smiled back. "I'm sorry for what I did. I had to do it, for the greater good."

Gamora continued smiling. "That's okay. You did what you had to."

Thanos was taken aback. On Vormir Gamora had said such hurtful things, but now it seemed she'd finally come back around to his way of thinking. But it just seemed... Too good to be true.

"The Stones showed me everything. I saw the last moment of every living thing that died by my hand. Your... Your lover, Starlord. He was among them."

Gamora was still smiling. "That's okay. You did what you had to. It was for the greater good."

_This isn't real._ The moment the thought entered his head, the Reality Stone released its hold on him, and the beautiful world in front of him melted away into nothing. He was left standing in the atrium of the ruined science centre. Only the conjured image of Gamora remained. She wasn't smiling any more.

"What... What is this?"

"We couldn't give you what you wanted." Gamora's lips moved, and multiple voices spoke out at once. "So we gave you the closest thing we could."

"Where is Gamora?"

"Dead. Even together, we cannot bring the dead back to life." Gamora's image chuckled darkly. "And there is no room left on your gauntlet for the one who can..."

"Room? Room for what?"

"The Life Stone."

\---

Tony handed Nebula the end of one of the power cables trailing out of the teleporter. "I don't get it. Why isn't this thing wired to the electricity grid?"

"It was designed to be portable. Luckily for us, or we'd have no way to power it." Nebula dragged the cable up to a nearby generator and connected it before continuing. "Thanos wanted to tour this thing around the whole planet."

"Why?"

"When Titan first started getting crowded, Thanos thought invaders from the Skrull galaxy were disguising themselves as Titans and living among them, taking up space that belonged to Titans only. Skrulls can blend in right down to the DNA, so Thanos built this. It sends people back to their homeworld, a one-way trip. He wanted the government to force everyone to walk through it, so all the Skrulls would be sent home."

"So what you're saying is, he's always been a sick bastard?"

"Yup." Nebula threw a switch on the generator and it came online, along with Thanos' Racism Machine. A doorway opened on the podium, and through it Tony could see a cliff overlooking the sea.

\---

"Where is the Life Stone?" Thanos asked.

"Hidden. But closer now than ever before."

"What does that mean?"

'Gamora' pointed to the stairwell in the corner of the atrium. "Someone has just opened a shortcut."

 ---

"We don't know how long the generator will last. You need to go."

"What about you?"

"My people wouldn't submit to Thanos." Nebula said. "He took me as a trophy, and turned the planet into glass from orbit." She looked into his eyes. "If you see Gamora, tell her I'm sorry."

"I'm coming back for you. We're gonna fix this. All of it." Tony turned and stepped into the portal.


	2. Origins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Multiple perspectives again on this chapter, then after that it's gonna be mostly Tony. Probably. We'll see.

Tony walked through the portal and found himself on the coastline of some northerly country, perhaps Scandinavia. He accessed his suit's communicator and was unsettled to find it still read 'out of range'. He tried recalibrating it, but it was no use. Maybe the satellite network was damaged when Thanos' forces came for the Mind Stone.

Didn't matter, he decided. He had to get to Avengers HQ and work out a new plan of attack. He spotted a small fishing village further along the coast and made his way over there.

\---

Thanos used the Space Stone to teleport straight into his old workshop, where he could see his homeworld teleporter had been activated. He caught a glimpse of Stark walking out of view.

_The Life Stone. It was on Earth._

"That's not Earth." 'Gamora' spoke up beside him.

"Where is it?"

"The planet doesn't have a name. But its solar orbit passes through the Origin Point of the universe. The Life Stone is on there, somewhere. If Stark finds it first, he can use it to return every life we have taken." The spectre turned to look at him. "The doorway is closing."

Thanos started towards the portal, but as he stepped through he simply came out on the other side of the podium. His gauntlet was suddenly hot, though. He looked down, and to his dismay the Stones had disappeared. As he moved his hand the Gauntlet cracked into pieces and fell to the floor with a clatter. The projection of Gamora had disappeared, too.

\---

Nebula watched from the shadows as Thanos screamed and kicked things about. This was it. Her chance. The Stones were gone. Thanos was vulnerable. She could take him by surprise. Except... That spectre of Gamora.

It had looked right at her in her hiding place, just before Thanos stepped through the portal. In that brief moment, time seemed to freeze, and the Six Stones gave her a glimpse of the planet Tony had ended up on, and its location in space. The Life Stone was the key to reversing the Snap, and the other Stones had managed to trick Thanos into sending them home to join it. That was their message to her. So she waited. Thanos stormed back up the stairs, and she crept along behind him. 

\---

Tony approached a rugged fisherman loading nets onto a boat. "Excuse me, sir? Do you speak English?"

"What's English?"

"So... Yeah. Okay, can you tell me where I am?"

The fisherman looked Tony up and down. "You're not from 'round 'ere..."

"Yup, that's why I'm asking."

"You're in Iron Man's Bay."

Tony was taken aback. "I'm sorry, what?"

"You been on the sauce? Ironman's Bay. South of the Twins, North of Riverrun."

"Right. Where's the nearest airport?"

The man simply stared at him.

"Helipad? _Train station?_  C'mon, man. I need to get-" Tony stopped dead in his tracks. There was a crescent moon rising over the ocean. But it wasn't Earth's moon. "- Home." He left the fisherman without another word and walked into the fishing village. The people wore clothes made of leather or wool, and he couldn't see any signs of electricity - power lines, lights, anything. Wherever he was, he was a long way from civilisation as he knew it.

He saw a dirt road leading up the cliffs and started following it. His suit wouldn't be fully repaired for at least a few hours, maybe even a few days. His best hope was to find the nearest big city and hope that they had something he could use to send out a distress signal. Even a large antenna would work if he could connect it to his suit. Eventually until he came to a trading post, and the signpost gave him two options: the Twins, or Riverrun. A hundred and fifty miles each way. Tony sighed. He asked his suit to generate a random whole number between one and zero, essentially flipping a coin. _Zero._ Looks like he was headed North to the Twins.

\---

A few hours later, what remained of Thanos' fleet arrived to retrieve him from Titan. Thanos' flagship, Sanctuary II, remained in orbit, while a small contingent of dropships and fighters descended. His lieutenants stepped out to greet him on the planet's surface. They hesitated when they saw that his Gauntlet was gone, but he reassured them that it was a necessary part of his plan. They returned to orbit, and Thanos gathered his remaining lieutenants on the bridge of Sanctuary II.

"My children. It is a great day for the universe. We have accomplished what no other beings have been able to accomplish, and because of us, the universe can begin anew. But there is one final task left. One more challenge we must overcome.

"There is a seventh Infinity Stone. The aspect it controls is Life itself, and if it is discovered by our enemies, all our work will be undone. It is hidden at the Origin Point of the universe, and we must find it, or the universe will never be safe."

The ship's Navigator started plotting a course. "There's argument as to where the Origin Point actually is, but we know it's somewhere in this quadrant of the spiral galaxy GR-RM." The Navigator pointed to a section of map roughly thousands of solar systems across. "It's thirty jump points away."

"We have no time to waste."

The Navigator opened the first jump point, a massive hexagonal-shaped portal in space, and the Fleet Commander ordered the rest of the fleet to form up and prepare for hyperspace. 

\---

Nebula pressed a gun to the pilot's head. "Out." He complied, and she shot him with a stun pulse as soon as he was out of the chair. She took the controls and manoeuvred the fighter out of the docking queue and towards the rear of the flagship, flying as close to the larger ship's hull as she could manage.

" _Nemesis Seven, Return to Sanctuary II._ " The Fleet Captain ordered over the radio.

"Sorry, no can do." Nebula whispered to herself, and brought the ship's weapons systems online. Sanctuary II's main energy shield was simply impenetrable to a ship like the one she had just hijacked, but she was currently _inside_ that shield. She headed straight for the ship's main engines, blazing a trail of plasma across them, then swept over to the other docking port on the opposite side and exited through the other hole in the shield, quickly programming a jump course for Earth. Several fighters broke away from the docking queue to follow her, but she was far enough ahead that the first jump point closed before most of them could follow her through. Meanwhile, the molten blobs of plasma stuck to Sanctuary's engine housings were quite merrily eating their way through the ship's hull metal, until one lucky blob reached something much more flammable.

"The main fuel line has ruptured!" The Engineer on the bridge rapidly typed in various commands, venting the fuel lines to prevent a chain reaction back to the tanks, and flushing those lines with an extinguishing fluid. Eventually the klaxons ringing out across the bridge stopped. He breathed a sigh of relief, until he felt Thanos' hand on his shoulder.

"Status report."

The Engineer took a deep breath. "We need to repair the fuel lines before the main engines can be brought back online. It'll take several days." Thanos' hand on his shoulder tightened, and for a moment he thought those were going to be his last words, but then it loosened again.

"Do what you need to do."

\---

Nebula wrestled with the ship's controls as she darted in and out of the jump points at full speed. She didn't know what state Earth's defences would be in once she got there, so the fewer ships that followed her to Earth, the better. Some were too slow and were left stranded when the next portal closed in front of them, others missed the portals entirely because they were going too fast to turn. By the time Nebula exited the last jump point into Earth's atmosphere, there were only two of them left, and she dispatched these with the same ferocity that Thanos had first seen in her all those years ago.

She spotted a what looked like a suitable landing pad on the top of a small mountain. A gigantic statue of some kind of Earth beast looked out towards the nearby city. As she landed and powered the ship down, a bolt of lightning came out of the clear blue sky and struck the ground in front of the ship. When her eyes recovered from the flash, she saw a man with an axe standing in its place.


	3. Soup-er.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: *forgets to include vital plot point in previous chapter*  
> Me: "Tony is still in shock, that's why it took him several hours to realise."

Tony had been walking for what felt like hours. His nanobots had repaired themselves as best they could, but they'd now run out of a laundry list of elements and compounds required to finish the job, so for the time being his Suit was capped at 20% functionality - no flight, no super-strength, just a wall of thin metal between him and the world if he absolutely needed it. He was exhausted and angry and just about ready to lie down in the middle of the road and wait to be trampled by a passing horse. He wished he'd never set foot in that dumb teleporter. It was decades-old alien tech, built by a tyrannical madman. He was lucky to have landed on an actual planet, rather than just stepping out into the vacuum of space...

But there was something else tugging at the edge of his mind. His weary subconscious was telling him he'd missed something. He tried to force his sluggish brain to remember what it was by going over everything that had happened in the last few hours. It was the emotional equivalent of dragging himself over a sea of broken glass. Every punch that Thanos had been able to block, every one of the Suit's projectiles that had missed their target, every minute failure of Tony's had lead to the end of half of all life in the universe. Was Pepper among them?

He stopped and took a look around. People and horses diverted around him. Curt words were thrown his way, but he didn't hear them. Nobody was running, or mourning, or taking up arms. They were just going about their daily lives as normal. He turned to a passing farmer driving a cart.

"Hey, what happened to everybody?"

The farmer looked confused. "Gonna have to be more specific."

Tony took off at a light jog to keep up with the empty cart. "Half of all living creatures in the universe, turned to dust. Why isn't anyone talking about it?"

The farmer narrowed his eyes. "Are you one of those doomsday prophets?"

"Are you telling me _nobody_ has disappeared in the last... Two hours?"

"Look mate, are you gonna follow me all the way to Winterfell with this nonsense?"

The word 'Winterfell' sounded somehow familiar, but Tony dismissed it in favour of bigger concerns. "It just doesn't make any sense." He pleaded. "I fought Thanos, he won, he snapped his fingers, and all of a sudden, everyone was gone."

The farmer's expression softened somewhat. "Nobody's magically disappeared, okay? It's all in your head." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver coin. "My sister used to see shadows moving around her house where there weren't none. The Maester gave her something for it, and now she doesn't see them any more." He offered Tony the coin, "If I give you this, will you promise to find someone to help you?"

Tony looked at the silver coin for a moment. He really didn't like being handed things. But for only about the second ever time in his life, he had no money. He reached out and took the coin with a mumbled "Thank you." The farmer nodded and gave a short whistle to his horse, encouraging it to pick up the pace slightly. Tony dropped back to walking speed as the cart pulled away.

Thanos' Snap hadn't affected this planet. Tony's head was suddenly abuzz with possible reasons why. Maybe, by pure chance, it hadn't affected anyone near where Tony was. More optimistically, maybe the Snap had a maximum range? There were so many possibilities. He kept on walking.

Eventually, he arrived at an inn. It was close to sunset and the place was crowded with traders and travellers. He paid the innkeeper his silver coin for a room and a hot meal, and got a small bag of copper coins back. He'd have to figure out the exchange rate between the different currency denominations later, but for now, he reached into the folds of his jacket and pushed one of the grimier coins into the nanobot housing in his chest, careful not to reveal the light of his arc reactor to the rest of the tavern. Dirty coins were a kind of chemical breeding ground, where the dirt and salts from various people's fingers reacted with the coin's metal to make all sorts of useful compounds. The nanobots would be able to break down the coin and use those materials for their repairs.

The meal arrived, a hot bowl of soup, a bread roll, and a tankard of ale. Before eating any of it, Tony called a sliver of nanobots into his palm and casually waved his hand over the meal, as if wafting the steam away. The nanobots scanned the food and ale and determined their ingredients. Apparently everything was safe for him to eat, which was weird considering this was an alien planet, but he wasn't about to complain.

At the next table along, two older gentlemen were discussing recent events. Tony got on with his soup while he eavesdropped on their conversation.

"I heard that Lord Snow's bringing the Dragon Queen and her armies North." A round, white-bearded old sea captain mused. "Their meeting with Queen Cersei must've gone well."

"Considering nobody died, it must've gone very well." A wiry, mustachioed gentleman replied. "Our most noble Queen seems to have a penchant for the dark and dramatic."

The captain gave a fake gasp. "Are you talking about the _tragic accident_ at the Great Sept of Baelor?"

"No, of course not! I was talking about her _outfits_..." The mustachioed man grinned and both men burst out laughing. Tony guessed this was what passed for celebrity gossip in a semi-literate feudal society.

The old captain lifted his huge spectacles and wiped a tear from his eye. "You know what? I think the new Lady of Winterfell would make a better Queen than Cersei or Daenerys. She's more mature than both of them put together."

The other man nodded. "Agreed. Plus, the poor girl's been through hell and come out swingin'. Married off to two complete monsters. Her poor father, branded a traitor and executed. Her mother and eldest brother, murdered at the Red Wedding. Her aunt, pushed to her death at the Eyrie..."

"That family's had it's fair share of murder and betrayal. Remember Ned's brother, Brandon, and his father, Lord Rickard? Killed for sport by the Mad King..."

"The further back you go, the more tragedy you find."

Tony felt like he was listening to the synopsis of a TV show he hadn't watched in years. Lord Rickard? Ned? Brandon? He recognised those names...

"Hey, did anyone find out what happened to their other brother?"

"Who, Benjen? He took the Black. A man of the Night's Watch."

"No, the youngest one... The one who went missing as a boy."

" _Anthony_ Stark? I thought that was just a rumour?"

Tony inhaled a chunk of bread. The older men turned to stare at him as he gripped the edge of the table and coughed til his eyes watered. As he spluttered, he saw in his mind's eye a vivid image of himself as a young boy, standing in the courtyard of a medieval castle, watching a team of blacksmiths at work. Eventually, he regained the ability to breathe, and the other men resumed their conversation.

"Hmm... The youngest Stark boy wanders into the Wolfswood one day, and never comes back out... Maybe you're right. Just a rumour."

"Agreed." Said the old captain. "Hey, I think it's your round, Stan."

"George, my buddy... It's _your_ round."

"But I just got the last one?"

"That was the one you owed me for stealin' my cameo thing." He gestured at the tavern around them.

"Stealing? Are you saying you invented cameos?" The captain grinned.

"Ugh! Fine, my round..." The mustachioed gentleman got up and went to the bar, flashing a smile and a knowing wink to Tony as he passed by, which, despite being from a complete stranger, Tony found strangely reassuring.

Tony finished his soup off and checked in on his nanobots. 34% functionality. In the morning, he'd find out where this 'Winterfell' place was and go get some answers.


	4. And Now, Dragons.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony heads to Winterfell to find some answers.

It was mid-afternoon when Tony woke up in his room at the inn. He checked in on his trillion poly-metallic children, who informed him his Suit now had 69% functionality. Nice.

He went downstairs for a quick breakfast, then to the signpost on the road outside. Winterfell was a few hundred miles North from where he was, past the Twins. He activated his Suit, startling several people outside the tavern. He paid them no mind, activating his boosters and shooting up into the sky like a humanoid firework.

He followed the road North, the Riverlands passing by in a blur below him. After a minute, the road bent North-East and he came to a wide river and its main crossing point, two huge towers on either side of a stone bridge. He guessed those were the Twins. A little while later he switched to a larger road heading North again, and a few minutes after that he spotted a dark grey smudge at the edge of the horizon. His Suit's cameras zoomed in for him and he saw it was a vast army of soldiers, encamped at the side of the road. The foot-soldiers were wearing leather armour and carrying spears. They were joined by some light cavalry, and a few caravans. Tony wondered what they would think of him as he passed overhead. A meteor? Or perhaps one of their gods? _Is this how Thor felt all the time?_ He thought to himself, as the soldiers below turned towards the sound of his thrusters. He tilted his head to watch them watching him as he flew by.

Suddenly, everything went dark, and Tony's Suit was enveloped and gripped by some unseen force. He tried to break out, but whatever it was had him pinned with several tonnes of force. To make matters worse, his heads-up display was reporting piercing attacks all over. Then, just as suddenly, he was jerked sideways and flung back out into the open air. He tumbled for a few seconds, away from some dark shape in the sky and towards another one, and was gripped again by a second assailant. This time, his head was on the outside, and he caught a glimpse of what was attacking him.

A mouth full of jagged fangs. A head the size of a small car. Black scales and spines all along its back. And wings...

" **A dragon?!!** " he gasped. A piercing screech from somewhere beyond his periphery sent a shiver down his spine. Two dragons.

The one with Tony in its mouth beat its huge wings to tilt itself into a dive towards the ground. The soldiers scattered as it came in to land with a thud. Tony was suddenly aware of (and thankful for) his Suit's fluid filtration system. Like a dog carrying a chew toy, the dragon brought Tony to semi-circle of wooden caravans somewhere in the middle of the encampment. A group of foot-soldiers formed up around the central caravan. The door opened, and a young woman with snow-white hair stepped out. She was followed by a trio of older men, but it was clear from the guards' body language that she was the one in charge. She glanced at the dragon, then at the bright red thing in its mouth. A foot-soldier approached her and spoke in a language Tony didn't understand. Meanwhile the dragon, perhaps like a household pet that had been spotted with a piece of plastic in its mouth but not admonished yet, started chewing on its new toy, rolling a helpless Tony over and over, until one of its teeth pierced the casing of the Suit's arc reactor. A burst of energy radiated from the un-shielded reactor core before it tripped itself out to prevent a meltdown, and the dragon spat Tony out onto the ground. The dragon brought its huge head forward to sniff at the curl of blue smoke rising out of his chestplate, then seemed to recoil in disgust at what was presumably a very acrid smell.

With his reactor out, Tony only had what power was left in the capacitors. Enough to operate his boosters for approximately... Four seconds, if his math was right, which (unfortunately, in this case) it always was. With one dragon a few feet behind him, and the other still circling overhead, he decided his best option was to stay put, and try to talk his way out of this situation he'd found himself in. This should be interesting. He rolled onto his front and pushed himself to his feet. His proximity sensors showed that the dragon 's head was still right behind him, so he kept facing the way he was facing and hoped for the best. The white-haired woman and her party watched him from a distance.  _She must be the Dragon Queen those old guys were talking about in the tavern_ , Tony thought.

"It looks like a man in armour." She commented to her companions.

One of them, a dwarf with a scar across his face, spoke up. "My Queen, it is my duty to inform you that that is _not_ what a Westerosi Knight looks like. For a start, it's painted red and gold, like a child's toy."

Tony was about to respond, but then he remembered his licensed action figure  _was_ the best-selling out of all the Avengers...

The Dragon Queen nodded to the dwarf, while a second man, a middle-aged knight, leaned in to offer his own opinion. "Khaleesi, it is said that the ancient kings of _Valyria_ had their engineers build intricate machines called _Automatons,_ that could walk, talk, and even dance..."

The Queen seemed more interested in the older man's tale. "Go on, Ser Jorah."

"They took the form of animals mostly, though humanoid ones were also common. They were playthings, centrepieces of the Valyrian households, but ever since the Doom of Valyria, not a single one of them has been seen to move." He gazed pointedly at Tony, who ironically was now standing completely still.

The dwarf rolled his eyes. "I heard those stories as a child. They fit nicely alongside the ones about the Grumpkins and Snarks."

"And the _White Walkers?_ " The knight retorted. The dwarf's smirk faded.

Daenerys motioned for them both to be quiet, and took a tentative step towards Tony.

A third man stepped forward and put a cautious hand on her shoulder before she could take another step forward. Younger than the other two, and handsome, Tony guessed that this was her consort. "My Queen, If this _is_ one of those machines, come back to life... It has no masters now. We should be careful."

The dwarf scoffed. "- Of an ancient King's dancing robot? What's it going to do, pirouette us to death?"

Tony smirked inside his helmet. He was starting to warm up to the guy.

The Dragon Queen took another step and peered into the Suit's glowing eyes, trying to figure out what exactly she was looking at. Tony inclined his head to meet her gaze.

"What are you, man or machine?" She asked.

"Calm down, _Sarah Connor_. I'm no robot." Tony replied, startling her a touch. There was a faint sound of creaking leather as her soldiers tensed in their places, ready to defend their Queen. Even her dragon snorted to remind Tony that it was still behind him.

"You speak the common tongue." She stated. "Do you have a name?"

"I do," Tony diverted the nanobots that made up his helmet back into his chest, revealing his distinctly human-shaped head, "My name's Tony Stark, though most people just call me Iron Man."


	5. Oathbreaker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know it's short, but I have some strong opinions about the Season 7 finale, and following what was S8 E3, I've decided that I may as well bend the GoT plot to my liking, rather than having to adapt to the canon plot as it unfurls.

"My Lords, I need a moment with my brother."

The banner-men of House Lannister quickly departed the courtyard, leaving only Cersei, Jaime, and Ser Gregor. Cersei descended the steps and met Jaime on the map floor, glancing disdainfully at the spot marked 'Winterfell' before meeting his gaze. "How long will it take for our armies to reach Winterfell?" She asked.

"Depending on the weather?" Jaime tilted his head around as if doing the calculations there and then. "Less than a month."

Cersei nodded approvingly. "When the Army of the Dead are defeated, I want you to take Winterfell with the soldiers you have left."

Jamie blinked in surprise. "What?"

"Those walls have never been breached from the outside, not for thousands of years, and now our soldiers have been invited inside them. It's a golden opportunity. We can crush the rebellion in the North, once and for all."

Jaime shook his head in disbelief. "You just agreed to a truce."

"I'll say whatever I have to say to ensure the survival of this House." Cersei strode past him to sit down at her desk. "When the fighting in the North is over, the Dragon Queen and her armies will march South again. They won't stop, not until _we're_  all dead, or _they_  are. I know which outcome _I_ prefer."

Jaime looked down at Winterfell on the map, then back to Cersei.

"If you're really so concerned about breaking another oath, you should remember that the Stark boy decided the limits of the truce when he refused to bend the knee to me. He all but told us the peace would only last until the dead are defeated." She smiled to herself, "Not the cleverest Stark out there."

Jaime sighed. Capturing Winterfell would almost certainly end the war. And civilian casualties would be minimal compared to the series of battles and sieges it would take to win otherwise. Cersei watched Jaime's expression change as he slowly came round to the idea. When it seemed like he was done, she went over and embraced him by way of a reward. She turned and whispered in his ear. "Bring me the Dragon Queen's head," She said, kissing his neck softly. "If she truly can't be burned, I'll have her pretty little face made into a bedside lamp."


	6. Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to take this moment to acknowledge my beta, CJ, without whom this fic would never have been created.

Tony had given the Queen and her advisers the quick version of what he had come to recognise as his life's story. Born a Stark of Winterfell, got lost in the woods and somehow ended up on Earth, became Iron Man, fought Thanos and lost, tried to get back home, ended up here instead.

As it turned out, there _had_ been an Anthony Stark of Winterfell, who _had_ gone missing as a boy, but every word out of his mouth after that part was a direct contradiction to everything the people in front of him had been raised to believe. Teleportation? Life on other planets? Colourful rocks that control fundamental aspects of the universe? As a result, he spent the rest of the journey to Winterfell chained to the back of one of their caravans, where he passed the time by trying to figure out at which point in his explanation each of them had decided he was mad. He was sure that if he hadn't been witnessed actually  _flying_ , they would've killed him on the spot, but in view of that fact, they seemed to have decided that he was some sort of wizard, and therefore worth keeping alive for now. His Suit had run out of juice and the nanobots retreated back into its housing, which had been confiscated by one of the rough-looking cavalrymen.

The handsome young man who had stood by the Queen as she ordered Tony be put in chains turned out to be the bastard son of Ned Stark, which would have made him Tony's nephew. As they neared Winterfell, he left his position beside Daenerys and rode across the ranks to visit Tony.

"I still can't wrap my head around why you'd pretend to be my long-lost uncle. I'd say you were mad," He said, squinting at the sky, "But I saw you flying. I saw Drogon trying to bite you in half, and you just rolled out of his mouth unharmed." He looked at the Dothraki horsemen around them. "They think you're some kind of wizard."

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - _Arthur C. Clarke_. "More to the point, your Queen called her dragon _Drogon_?"

"He was named after Khal Drogo."

"Who's Carl Drogo?"

Jon looked over at Daenerys. "Her dead husband."

Tony winced. "That's rough, buddy."

Jon nodded. After a long pause, he spoke again. "Prove to me that you're not mad. Tell me something that only a Stark would know."

Tony figured there wasn't much he would be able to remember from his childhood that wouldn't be common knowledge to anyone who'd visited Winterfell or knew of its history. "The Maester used to keep a stash of ale behind a shelf of old books in the library." He offered.

"Winterfell has a library?"

Tony stared at Jon for a long time.

"Tell me something else."

Tony racked his brains trying to think of things to say. It was only when he recalled scratching a picture of himself fighting a dragon on one of the panels underneath his bed that Jon left him alone. When he rode back a few minutes later he had the keys to Tony's shackles.

"I used to hide under my bed when I was playing hide and seek with my brothers. Always wondered who ' _Toney_ ' was." He released Tony's manacles, and one of the Dothraki brought him back his arc reactor, though it was probably damaged beyond repair. Jon put a hand on Tony's shoulder. "We'll need every able person we can get in the battle to come. If you really are my uncle, then the North is as much your home as it is mine. We have to defend it from the Night King."

\---

Cersei and Qyburn were standing on the sprawling battlements of the Red Keep, watching the Iron Fleet return to port with the Golden Company mercenaries on board.

"Have you ever seen an elephant, Qyburn?"

"I can't say I have, your grace."

"Neither have I. I hope they're as fearsome as Strickland describes."

"Of course."

They watched as the first of the ships docked and began unloading troops and provisions. The Golden Company, marching off the ships in formation in their matching gold uniforms, looked much smarter and more professional than your average mercenary group, she thought. Just as she opened her mouth to say so, a small white dot, like a bright star, appeared in the sky above the Iron Fleet. She watched as it slowly grew into a distinct line, extending down towards them, widening at the base as it grew closer.

"Qyburn?"

"Yes, your grace?"

"What's that in the sky?"

"Perhaps a meteor?" Qyburn said, at first curious and then concerned. He looked to the Red Keep behind them, "Your grace?" He gestured for them to seek shelter within its walls, and Cersei moved to follow him, Ser Gregor lumbering along in tow.

A few minutes later, the column of light struck the harbour below, pulsing with a rainbow of colours, before extinguishing to reveal three people in the middle of a burning circular pattern.

Nebula let go of Stormbreaker and rubbed the side of her head. While Thor had the means to summon the Bifrost, she was the one who knew where they were going. To save her having to draw Thor a map, the axe sent a wave of dark magic through her on contact, resulting in it gaining the location data and teleporting the three of them there. The drawback was that it had left her processing chip with the digital equivalent of a migraine.

"Are you okay?" Steve Rogers asked.

"I will be." She replied.

"This place reminds me of Asgard." Thor remarked, glancing up at the battlements, and the Red Keep beyond them. "Except... For the smell."

They were quickly spotted by a quartet of soldiers in bronze chainmail. Steve took the lead. "We don't want any trouble. We're just looking for a friend of ours." He explained. "Can you tell us where we are?"

The soldiers drew their swords.

Nebula scanned the hostiles. "No stored energy, no explosives. Their weapons and armour are primitive."

Thor nodded, tapping Stormbreaker on the ground, causing blue sparks to crackle around the blade. "We told you, we don't want any trouble." As he said this, more soldiers appeared behind them. He sighed and turned to the other two. "I feel really bad about this. It's like arguing with ants." He glanced at Steve. "Or most of your people, no offence."

"Um, offence taken." Steve replied. Nobody talked about humans like that, true or not...

The patrolling soldiers attacked first, and were joined by some reinforcements from further down the harbour. The Gold Cloaks were soon beaten back, their armour and weapons easily pierced and dented by the superior metals of Cap's shield, Thor's axe and Nebula's twin daggers. Thor and Cap mainly attempted to knock out their opponents, and Nebula went for their legs to incapacitate them. Dozens of soldiers were felled in a matter of seconds, and those that remained could see they were outmatched and pulled back to surround the trio at what they considered a safe distance.

"Alright, can we try this again?" Steve asked. As he said this, a rumbling sound could be heard from further down the harbour. The Gold Cloaks turned tail and ran when they saw what was coming their way.

"What are those?" Nebula asked. Thor shrugged. They'd both fought a lot of giant alien beasts in their time, but they'd never seen any quite like this. They were greyish, four-legged things, with two huge tusks at the front, augmented with spikes. They were covered in plates of golden armour. The front one let out a stomach-dropping screech as the herd thundered towards them in a shallow 'V' formation.

"Oh God." Steve said. " _Elephants_."

They were trapped between the castle walls on their right and the edge of the harbour on their left. "Now it's a fair fight!" Thor yelled over the din, grinning at the others like a madman. He held Stormbreaker aloft, and clouds began to form in the sky at his command.

Thor charged forward and leapt into the air in front of the leading elephant. He went for the head this time, burying Stormbreaker's blade deep into its skull and sending the beast crashing to the ground. Nebula gritted her teeth and ran towards the right side of the stampede, running up the castle walls at an angle and leaping onto the nearest war elephant. She threw the rider off and grabbed the chains used to control it, pulling the beast sideways to smash against the others before leaping off and landing with a quick roll. Steve held his position until the last moment, then jumped into the narrow gap between two of the elephants, instinctively holding his breath as they charged past. On some level he felt sorry for them. Kidnapped and used to wage war, like someone else he used to know.

Behind the elephant charge, a line of soldiers in the same golden armour marched towards them at a steady pace. From somewhere behind those, hundreds of arrows were launched into the air. Cap crouched and raised his shield, and Nebula took cover behind the elephant Thor had just slain. Thor himself charged ahead, crashing into the line of soldiers as the arrows rained down on his allies behind him.

Cap and Nebula stood up and watched as the Golden Company's battle formation crumpled from the force of Thor's attacks. Cap winced as a he saw a blow from Stormbreaker's hammer side send one of the soldiers flying over his comrades and into the castle wall. Nebula grinned. "I like this one..."

The archers behind the vanguard retreated now that their protectors had been overwhelmed. The skies darkened as Stormbreaker charged itself for a lightning attack, and when it was ready Thor slammed its shaft into the ground, calling down on himself a massive bolt of lightning that jumped across the enemy soldiers in their metal armour, shocking them to their knees. Cap and Nebula joined him as the remaining soldiers retreated. The elephant riders behind them had stopped at the other end of the harbour, apparently standing down to protect their remaining elephants.

"What do we do now?" Nebula asked.

Thor looked up at the Red Keep. "If we want answers, we should've started at the top."

\---

"Look at you." Jon said to Bran, "You're a man!"

"Almost." Bran replied.

Jon didn't know how to respond to that, so he moved on to embrace Sansa. "Where's Arya?" He asked.

"Lurking somewhere."

 Jon introduced Sansa and Daenerys, then waved Tony over. "Sansa, Bran, this is-"

"-Tony Stark." Bran cut him off. "The last surviving brother of Ned Stark. The Lord of Winterfell."

Sansa and Daenerys looked at Tony in shock. Tony cleared his throat. "Listen," He looked at Bran, " _Kid Professor X_ , I'm not interested in running this place."

Sansa stared at Tony. "So you rescind your claim to the Lordship of our House?"

Tony opened his mouth to speak, but Bran interrupted. "We don't have time for all this." He turned to Daenerys. "The Night King has your dragon. He's one of  _them_  now." He turned to Jon. "The Wall has fallen; the Dead march South."


	7. Winterfell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Okay, I like your plan, except it sucks, so let me do the plan, and that way... It might be really good."

"They're coming. We have dragonglass and Valyrian steel. But there are too many of them. Far too many."

The leaders of Team North were assembled in the library around a map of Winterfell and the surrounding lands. The Army of the Dead was represented by a mass of hundreds of wooden blocks, wider than Winterfell itself. Around the sides of the table, next to their respective commanders, were blocks representing the soldiers of the Army of the Living. Sansa kept glancing at Tony when she though he couldn't see. He had publicly turned down the role of Lord of Winterfell, but the news of his arrival would soon spread throughout the North. He could understand why she was concerned. Sometimes ideas grew legs of their own.

"Our enemy doesn't tire. Doesn't stop. Doesn't feel. We can't beat them in a straight fight." Jon warned. "And the Night King has the power to raise any of our dead, and add them to his army."

"How dead can they be?" Tony asked, drawing some strange looks. "Like, how far does it go? Can he bring skeletons back, or do they need muscles to move? And what's his maximum range?"

Daenerys glared at him. "An army of the undead is coming to kill us all, and you're wondering how they move without muscles?"

"I'm wondering if there are limits to his power. I've fought aliens, robots, one or two gods... Zombies are a new one, but the key, _every time_ , is to know what you're fighting."

"And what they want." Sansa added. She sipped on her goblet of wine before continuing. "We have an army. The greatest army in all of Westeros, and it's all concentrated here in Winterfell. The other houses are far less defended, so why is he coming for us first?"

Bran spoke up next to Tony, causing him to jump out of his skin. "Because you have something he wants."

Tony spun around to face him. "Bran, honestly, I had forgot you were here. You weren't moving _at all_."

Sansa stared at Bran. "What are you talking about?"

"The Night King has waited for thousands of years to breach the Wall. He has a single purpose. To bring about an end to the time of men." He looked deeply into Sansa's eyes. "And now he can, by creating an eternal winter."

Sansa dropped her goblet in sudden shock. "Allfathers..." She breathed. "Tony, may I speak with you alone?"

The pair left the War Room and found a deserted stairwell to talk.

"I have something to tell you, but you have to keep your voice down." She said.

"Sure."

A green light rippled around her body, revealing a taller, black-haired man in a dark green coat.

Tony stumbled back in shock. "Loki? How the hell..."

Loki smiled awkwardly at him. "Hey, Tony. Long time, no see?"

"What have you done with Sansa?!" Tony whispered.

"Relax, okay? She's asleep in her chambers, has been since this afternoon. And having seen inside her mind, I can confirm she _deserves the rest_."

Tony shook his head in disbelief. "Banner said you were dead."

They both heard a guard approaching. Loki opened his hand and twirled it in mid air to conjure the Space Stone. A flick of the wrist later, and he and Tony were alone on the roof of Winterfell's keep. Loki tossed the Stone between his hands while Tony got his bearings.

"Okay, new question: How the hell did you get that?" Tony asked.

"When Thanos attacked our ship, I hid inside the Space Stone and left a projection of myself behind, so Thanos would think he'd killed me. I didn't know what else to do, he beat the Hulk _by himself_. There was no stopping him." He said. "I waited for the right opportunity, to..."

"Pop out and stab the bastard?"

"Essentially, but when I finally saw my chance, the Stone wouldn't let me leave. It has a mind of its own. I've come to believe all the Stones do. So then Thanos collected the others, and..."

"Wiped out half of all life." Tony said bluntly.

"Yes." Loki sighed.

"And you just sat there, hidden inside this thing." Tony glared at him. " _Safe_."

"I had no choice."

"Oh Yeah? Really?!" Tony lunged at Loki, who simply used the Space Stone to freeze him in place and continued his train of thought as if he hadn't been interrupted.

"There's something else you should know." He held the Space Stone in one hand and reached into it with the other, pulling something either invisible or impossibly tiny out of it. "I brought this with me from Asgard." He opened his seemingly empty hand, and a glowing blue box materialised there. "It's what the Night King is after."

Tony stared at the box as a layer of ice began to form around it. "What is it?"

"My birthright. The Casket of Ancient Winters. Odin took it from Jotunheim when he defeated my father. I took it from Odin's Vault before Asgard was destroyed. If the Night King gets this, he'll be able to freeze the entire planet." He released Tony from the Space Stone's grip.

"Then we gotta get it out of here." Tony looked at the Stone. "Use that thing."

"I can't, like I said, it has a mind of its own. It will allow you to do certain things, but it wouldn't let me leave this planet I first got here."

"Hence your immediate impersonation of the nearest authority figure. Do you have daddy issues, by any chance?"

"I'm wouldn't be the only one."

Tony narrowed his eyes at Loki. He held out his hand for the Space Stone. "Let me try."

Loki rolled his eyes and tossed it to him. "I'm insulted that you don't believe me."

"How d'you work this thing, just think real hard about where you wanna go?"

"It's a little more complicated than-"

Tony disappeared in a cloud of blue smoke. Loki looked around at the roof of the keep. There didn't seem to be any route down. A moment later Tony returned, gasping for breath.

"I saw him." He wheezed. "The Night King."

"The Stone took you there on purpose." Loki mused, plucking the Stone back out of Tony's hand. "Since neither of us can escape, or outrun an army of dead men, our only option is to fight." He smirked. "This should be fun."

Tony nodded. "Take us back downstairs."

"Oh, are you cold?" Loki grinned.

\---

"Hey guys," Tony strode back into the War Room, "Sansa's gone for a little lie down, which is a shame, because she's the smartest out of all of you. On the _plus side_ , though," He gestured to Loki, "I found a friend of mine. He's one of the gods I was talking about."

"He doesn't look like a god." Arya said, eyeing Loki's black-and-green ensemble. "He looks like a witch." Loki guessed from the way she said it that 'witch' was an insult in this realm.

"He's not. Okay, he kinda is. But he can help us, that's the main thing." Tony scanned the map table, taking note of where each commander had placed their units. "So, here's the plan..." He began.

Jon gestured to the formations on the map. "We already have a plan. And who put you in charge?"

" _You_ did, by placing your siege weapons..." Tony reached forward and picked up one of the trebuchets, "Out in front, where they will be overrun almost immediately."

The others around the map table turned to stare at Tony as he picked up the other trebuchets and placed them just in front of the walls. He moved the Unsullied behind the fire trench to protect them, and divided the Dothraki into two groups, placing them either side of Winterfell. He looked at Daenerys, "Your Bloodrider guys are _terrifying_ ," He turned to Jon, "But you said it yourself, the enemy doesn't _feel_. You can't shock them into submission, so the cavalry should stay out of the fight until the crowd's thin enough for them to do clean up." He took the Northern armies and put them on the walls, and the Lannister foot-soldiers into the courtyard.

"I might have grown up on a different planet, but the laws of physics and mathematics and... _Logic_ are still the same. We have thirty foot walls, and they have no archers or siege engines. They have _one_ dragon, we have _two_. We can win this thing, if we just think about what we're doing. How long do we have before he gets here? Bran?"

"Two days, at most. When he arrives, I can help you best from the Godswood. It's where my powers are strongest."

Jon put a hand on Bran's shoulder. "We're not leaving you out there alone."

"He won't be." Theon spoke up. "I'll stay with him, with the Ironborn." He looked at Bran. "I took this castle from you. Let me defend you now."

Winterfell was alive with activity as soon as the meeting ended. Dragonglass was a sharp but brittle material. It couldn't be melted down and cast into dies, like metals could. The Free Folk were skilled at shaping flint, which was the closest material to dragonglass that any of them had encountered, so they took over the courtyard, breaking the chunks of dragonglass down into arrowheads and daggers and spikes to be affixed to the battlements.

While the soldiers trained, every idle hand helped to dig the trench around the walls that would become a flaming pit of death on the night of the battle. Winterfell's engineers built six trebuchets, and at Tyrion's insistence, a single scorpion ballista, which they affixed to the Old Tower between the keep and the Godswood. Jaime offered to man it, admitting that even after a few years of practice, he was still a sub-par left-handed swordsman. "Just make sure you shoot the right dragon." His brother had quipped.

Anyone who couldn't fight was evacuated to Deepwood Motte. If House Glover were refusing to commit troops to Winterfell, the least they could do was house her civilians until the battle was over. The crypt was to be sealed shut with the pile of mud and rubble from where they'd dug the fire trench, to stop the honoured dead from rising up and killing the living.

Sansa awoke the next morning with no memory of having been in the War Room the previous evening. The Maester put it down to an imbalance of the humours.

Once they had a spare moment, Jon took Tony on a tour of the crypt. He wanted to give him a chance to visit his ancestors before it was buried. Tony supposed it was to help him ground himself at Winterfell, and understand part of the history he was fighting for. But as he looked at the statue of his father, Rickard Stark, he felt as if he was looking at a stranger.

"He was so busy all the time, and I was his youngest. I pretty much only saw him at feasts, and even then, I was at the far end of the table." Howard Stark had been much the same, although he had regretted it later on. "My... The man who raised me, he once said "All the money in the world never bought a moment of time." I guess that's true no matter what planet you live on."

Jon nodded. Then he smiled. "You got to sit at the same table as your dad?"

As they laughed together, a lost memory found its way out from Tony's subconscious.

\---

Tony was alone, deep in the Wolfswood outside of Winterfell. He'd snuck out with nothing but his wooden toy sword for protection. His father and eldest brother had gone South to talk to the King about something important, something to do with his big sister Lyanna. They hadn't come back, and now his other brothers Ned and Benjen had left as well. Though his mother and the Maester were unwilling to tell him what had happened, he'd overheard the servants talking about it. "Die, dragon! He said, thrusting at thin air. The Mad King had burned his father alive. In the silence of the forest, he let out a primal scream and threw his sword around, pretending he was surrounded by the evil Kingsguard who had stood by and watched as his father and brother were murdered. Tears streamed down his face as he slayed them all, one by one, until finally the Mad King himself appeared before him.

As the Mad King died by Tony's sword, he heard a sound behind him. He turned to see a sphere had appeared in the air between two trees. Blue smoke seemed to billow around its edges as it widened into a black hole big enough to walk through. Tony dropped his sword. The darkness inside the sphere faded away to reveal the inside of a room, as if it were a doorway into a building. Tony circled the portal in complete wonder. Where did it lead? There was only one way to find out...


	8. King's Landing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I know you guys were expecting the Long Night chapter, but this had to come first.

Thor, Cap and Nebula were escorted into the Red Keep by a pair of black-armoured knights. In a show of good faith, Cap handed over his shield, and Nebula her daggers. Thor warned the Queensguard knights that Stormbreaker couldn't be held by mortal men, and would send them mad, but one of them took it as a challenge. He was able to touch it without harm, but as soon as Thor let go of the handle the knight suddenly dropped it and ran away down the corridor screaming.

"He'll be okay, eventually." Thor said. He picked Stormbreaker back up and they continued on into the Great Hall. When the trio reached the throne at the end, Cersei eyed them cautiously. Qyburn stepped forward to make the introductions.

"You are in the presence of Queen Cersei Lannister, the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms."

Thor stepped forward. "Your Majesty,-"

Qyburn interrupted, "You will address the Queen as "Your Grace"."

"My apologies, your Grace. My friends and I are not from this realm. I am Thor Odinson, King of Asgard and God of Thunder." He turned to his right, "This is Steve Rogers, Captain... Of America." And to his left, "And this is Nebula."

"Thor, is it?" Cersei asked. Thor nodded. "I've never heard of Asgard. In fact I'm fairly sure you just made it up. But what's more important is that you and your party are responsible for the deaths of nearly a hundred of my most loyal soldiers, as well as killing one and injuring several of my finest war elephants."

Nebula spoke up. "They attacked us." Thor shot her a look. "... Your  _Grace_."

Cersei glared at Nebula, then back to the three of them in general. "You were trespassing in the Royal Dockyards. You had an opportunity to lay down your arms and you refused to do so." She looked a Thor. "You, in particular, apparently were able to slaughter  _dozens_ of trained soldiers in a matter of minutes without receiving so much as a scratch in return, which leads me to believe that you simply chose to massacre my guards because it was _easier_. Your capacity for violence sickens me." She was using all her available energy to keep a straight face. Contrary to her words, their capacity for violence _enthralled_ her, but they seemed like an _honourable_ , _righteous_ lot, so she wanted to see them squirm when faced with the harsh reality of their actions.

"Your Grace, we're very sorry about what happened." Steve said.

"I don't want your apologies." Cersei snapped, leaning forward on the throne. "I want you to tell me who sent you here, and why."

Thor began the explanation he'd prepared as they made their way to the Red Keep. "We seek an object called the Life Stone. In our battles with a being called Thanos, he wiped out half of all life in the universe. Your planet seems to have been unaffected, and we believe this is due to the Life Stone's influence. Wherever it is, we need to borrow it in order to bring all our friends back."

Cersei stared at the three of them for what felt like an eternity. Nothing he'd said had any connection to the War in the North, or the Starks or Targaryens. She re-processed what it was Thor had actually said, while he and his friends waited in silence. _He might well be mad. But if he's telling the truth..._ Finally, she cleared her throat and spoke. "You are saying... That this _stone_ can bring people back from the dead?"

"We hope so." Said Steve.

Thor spoke up, "Your Grace, I know it sounds like fantasy, but if anything, we're living proof that the universe we are living in is far stranger than you could have imagined. The three of us are from three different planets. I am over a thousand years old. Captain Rogers here survived for decades frozen in ice. And Nebula is... _Blue_."

Cersei looked at Qyburn, then back to the three of them. They seemed like a well-meaning bunch. Heroic, even. Asking her for help, instead of storming the Red Keep and getting the information by force. "I might know where this 'Life Stone' is." The trio straightened up in anticipation. _How quaint._ "But first, you owe me a debt."

\---

On their way out of the Red Keep, Nebula leaned in to whisper to the other two. "I don't trust her."

"You don't trust anyone." Thor said. "Look, I've been to a lot of different planets, met a lot of different rulers. She's one of the _good ones_."

Steve was unconvinced. "Based on what? We only just got here. There could be a whole interwoven political struggle going on here, with no true right answers. And besides, as outsiders, we shouldn't be so quick to take sides."

Thor smiled and shook his head, gesturing to a group of Golden Company soldiers making their way through the city. "Look at them. Bright colours, clean uniforms. Just like the soldiers who once protected Asgard. When my sister Hela seized the throne and raised an army of undead warriors to try and conquer the universe, they were all green and grey and evil-looking. Colour theory. True throughout the universe."

All this talk of choosing sides was getting in the way of their goal of stopping Thanos, but Nebula found she couldn't help but join in. "She was wearing black, so were her bodyguards."

"She's in mourning!" Thor countered. "She told us herself, her traitorous brother killed her father and all her children, and escaped to join the rebellion that is threatening to tear this continent apart. I can see why she's not in the best of moods..." Steve and Nebula simply shook her heads at him. "Alright, what do you suggest? A survey of the common people, to see which Queen they prefer?"

\---

High up in her chambers in the Red Keep, Cersei handed Qyburn a newly-written raven scroll bound for Winterfell. It read:

_Brother,_

_Forget all previous commands._

_When the Night King is defeated, search his body for a stone or jewel he carries, and bring it back to King's Landing at once._

_Your sister and Queen,_

_Cersei I._


	9. The Long Night, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I thought about holding back another day to finish editing the chapter, but considering recent events I've decided that there's nothing written here that's worse than the writing we've been given in the actual show, so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony's new helmet is in this shape, for those of you who aren't into your medieval armour: www.historicalclothingrealm.com/visored-bascinet.html

The Army of the Living were preparing for the longest night of their lives.

Loki, Tony and Bran were the only ones who knew what the Night King was really after, and they had quickly decided that it should stay that way. Loki, with his Jotunn blood, was the only one who could hold the Casket of Ancient Winters without it freezing him, so despite his combat prowess they decided he should wait in the library on the third floor of Winterfell Keep, along with everyone else who was too valuable to have fighting.

Bran took up position beneath the weirwood tree in the Godswood, surrounded by Theon's Ironborn.

Jaime was in control of the Scorpion on top of the Old Tower, half-way between the courtyard and the Godswood. He'd been uncharacteristically quiet and distant for the last few days. He let people think it was because he was contemplating their collective demise, but what really worried him was what he was going to do if they won. His men had the courtyard, which was easily one of the safest positions. He knew if the living survived the Long Night he'd most likely have enough soldiers left to take Winterfell. But he also knew, in his heart, that Ser Brienne would never forgive him if he did. When a raven arrived for him from King's Landing, he read it three times over, not quite believing what he was seeing. It was in Cersei's own handwriting. She'd changed her mind. She wanted him to come home. And bring her a gift...

Down in the courtyard, Tony approached the forge with hands full and an idea burning in his head. "Hey, kid? Can you help me with somethin'?"

Gendry was cleaning out the charcoal pit. "M'lord?"

"Name's Tony." He set a collection of objects down on the nearest workbench. His broken arc reactor, Maester Wolkan's chain, a compass, and a bucket of dragonglass shards that had been deemed too small to be of use.

Gendry eyed the chain warily. They were considered sacred to the Order of Maesters. Each link signified one of that particular Maester's fields of expertise. Maesters weren't supposed to take their chains off, even to sleep. How Tony managed to get hold of Wolkan's... Gendry figured it was better if he didn't know.

"I need you to take the copper link from this, and turn it into wire - as fine as you can make it."

Gendry winced. Drawing metal down into wires for chainmail was a tiring and time-consuming process. It involved pulling the material through circular-shaped dies of slowly decreasing size. Often, the act of drawing hardened the metal so much that it would have to be annealed part-way through the process to soften it again before continuing. He thought he'd drawn his last wire once he'd made it up North, where plate armour was the preferred method of protection. "I'll see if there's a draw plate around here."

"Great." While Gendry split the copper link off Wolkan's chain and began drawing it down, Tony took an iron bar from the forge's stocks and started forging it into a ring shape. He worked it over and over to make sure it was a round as he could make it, before finally cooling it and clamping it vertically in a vice that he aligned North using the compass.

Gendry watched as Tony hammered it repeatedly, not understanding what was going on. The ring was so cold Tony's hammer blows couldn't possibly be shaping it at any kind of rate. Finally, he worked up the courage to ask, "What are you doing?"

"You ever notice how iron and steel start to attract bits of metal to them if you hammer them for long enough?" Tony swapped hands and continued whacking the metal. "It's called magnetism. The shock from the hammer makes the crystals in the metal point towards the strongest magnetic field they can find, which in our case is the one generated by this planet's core - the same one that makes all the compasses point North. Once enough of the crystals are pointing the same way, it should give us enough of a magnetic field to make a really, really inefficient electrical generator."

Gendry understood most of what Tony had said. "What's an electrical generator?"

"It makes electricity, which is what I need to get my Suit back up and running."

By sunset, Gendry had drawn the copper down into a reel of fine wire, which Tony wrapped around a smaller iron ring that fit inside the larger magnetised one. Tony attached the rings to a spare cart wheel so that the coil ring was fixed in place and when the wheel was spun the magnetic ring rotated around it. He attached the two ends of wire from the coil across his broken arc reactor, and told Gendry to spin the wheel as fast as he could. After a few seconds, the light inside the reactor flickered back on.

"Hah! It's working! Keep going, the battery only lasts a few minutes, so we need to make sure it's full." Once the battery was fully charged, Tony put the housing in place on his chest. "You'll wanna watch this, kid." He called his nanobots out, coating every inch of himself in red and gold armour. Tony pointed to the bucket of tiny dragonglass spikes, and Gendry quickly and carefully set them into Tony's armour, marvelling at how the material could become like a liquid at will. Tony figured it would be thousands of years before anyone from this planet would understand how nanotechnology worked, but Gendry was polite enough to nod thoughtfully when he explained that his Suit was made up _tiny metal creatures_ that ate electricity, and moved where he wanted them to go because of special invisible waves in the air around them.

Once the battery died, his armour would be frozen in place, so Tony made his nanobots revert to the classic Mark 7 design he'd used in the Battle of New York. Its interlocking plates would allow him to move freely, while not exposing any of his skin to the wights. The shoulders and gauntlets were covered with forward-facing dragonglass spikes, giving distinct Shredder vibes. His eye-slits weren't big enough for him to see through without the cameras that would usually sit just behind them, so he reformed the helmet to resemble a medieval bascinet. "Tell me honestly, on a scale of one to _badass_ , how do I look?"

Gendry grinned and shook his head. "I don't know what that word means..."

Tony clapped a hand on Gendry's shoulder. "You do now."

\---

An hour later, the Army of the Dead was on the horizon.

Not long after that, as the tidal wave of wights came rushing towards Winterfell, the trebuchets began to launch their flaming rocks, and Daenerys and Jon flew Drogon and Rhaegal over to criss-cross the horde with dragon-fire. The dots and dashes of flames on snow-covered ground illuminated the battlefield and gave the archers on the walls a better view of what they were aiming at. Fire and rocks and repeated volleys of arrows struck the wights that formed the crest of the wave, eventually causing it to lose all momentum and collapse, causing the Army of the Dead to slow as they were made to clamber over the ridge of their twice-dead. The first few lines of wights then fell into the six-foot deep trench filled with spikes and flaming tar. They clambered over each other like crabs in a bucket trying to get out the other side, but the Unsullied jabbed at them with their spears. The hope was that the mass of twice-dead wights in the trench would catch fire as well and become an additional obstacle, but under the command of the Night King soaring high overhead, the wights focused their efforts on the centre of the trench, piling into that one spot until they formed a bridge that the rest of them could cross.

Seeing their chance, Jon and Daenerys' urged their dragons to climb higher towards the Night King, while far below them the Dothraki received the signal to charge the flanks of the waiting wights in a long column formation, wearing away at the edges of the horde with flaming swords. The Unsullied stood their ground behind the trench, three rows of spears stabbing rhythmically at the wights as they flooded over their makeshift bridge. As the wights died and fell backwards into the trench, the bridge grew wider, and eventually the sheer number of them started to overwhelm the Unsullied.

In the Godswood, Bran said some distinctly un-reassuring words to Theon, before rolling his eyes back into his head and leaving his human form behind. Moments later, a thundering herd of wild creatures of all sizes - foxes to wolves to bears - came streaming out of the Wolfswood and around the burning trench to meet the Army of the Dead and tear them limb from limb.

In the sky above, Jon and Dany battled the Night King by the light of the crescent moon, each of them taking turns blasting jets of fire at him and his dragon. The dragon wight responded in kind, latching on to Rhaegal in mid-flight and dragging his claws down his belly, while Jon sat helplessly in the saddle. Dany crashed Drogon into the pair to separate them, and the Night King, sensing he was at a disadvantage, dove back through the clouds towards Winterfell. As the front line of wights overcame the Unsullied and started piling up against the castle's walls, the Night King ordered his lieutenants to approach and prepare for breaching.


	10. The Long Night, Part 2

"Sansa, there you are!" Tyrion exclaimed from the other end of the corridor. "I've been looking all over for you."

From a window on the top floor of Winterfell Keep, Sansa watched intently as the battle played out below them. The siege engineers had started tipping oil down the walls to burn away the wights trying to climb them, but the freezing temperatures had made the oil gloop together like molasses, exiting the barrels in blobs instead of a steady stream. "I should've had them store the oil near the braziers to keep it warm." She sighed. _They'll never be able to light it in time_ , she thought. _How many more lives would be lost due to her error?_

Tyrion joined her at the window and watched with her. The engineers quickly gave up and evacuated the walls, replaced by swordsmen who jabbed at the wights as they tried to climb over. "We should go back to the library." Tyrion urged, although now that he'd started watching, he felt like he didn't want to stop, either. No matter how grim or poorly-written it became.

Sansa shook her head. "I can't sit and and wait in there, not knowing what's going to happen. Not knowing if I'll live or die." She tore her eyes away from the window and looked at Tyrion for a moment. "Not again."

"I understand." Tyrion nodded. "Blackwater. If I could go back, I'd still pick fighting in the vanguard over being locked in a room with my sister." He winked at her.

Sansa smiled. "One of my best memories of her, actually. She got so drunk that she actually started being honest with me. Or she was too drunk to keep lying to me. One of the two." Her smile quickly faded and she glanced at Tyrion again. "You know why she sent her army here to support us, don't you?"

Tyrion sighed. "Jaime wouldn't do that."

Sansa leant close to the window so she could see across to the Old Tower where Jaime was manning the Scorpion. "Your brother pushed a ten-year-old out of that tower once because she told him to."

"There was a time when he would do anything for Cersei. But he's changed."

"I hope you're right, for all our sakes."

\---

Rhaegal drifted back to earth in a near free-fall, the gouges in his stomach streaming blood into the night air. Without enough strength left to control his dive, he crashed into the top of the castle wall next to the main gate, breaking the battlements and scattering the soldiers there, before tumbling down into the courtyard and crushing dozens of Lannister soldiers. Tony ran forward to un-link Jon from Rhaegal's saddle. He was pale and shaking. "Nice of you to drop in." Tony said, dodging a sweep of Rhaegal's tail before lifting Jon over his shoulder and carrying him back to the Keep. He rested him up against the wall and checked him for wounds. "I can't be sure, but I think you have an un-broken rib or two."

Up above, Drogon circled the castle, screeching anxiously at his injured brother on the ground. Daenerys could see Jon was in a bad way, too, but the best thing she could do for them right now was keep the wights from getting in. She had Drogon blast a long line of dragonfire across their ranks, and swept round for a second run when an icy spear shot past her head. The White Walkers had moved in to take shots at her dragons. She hesitated for a second, then turned Drogon away from the battle, not wanting to lose another one of her children. She would have to believe she had done enough to secure victory.

The Night King looked on as Daenerys fled, then ordered his wights to swarm to the broken part of the battlements. Once they had overcome the soldiers on the wall, they would open the main gate for his lieutenants and the rest of the army, and once the soldiers in the courtyard and the seer in the Godswood were slain, they would search every room in the castle for the Space Stone and the Casket of Ancient Winters. The Infinity Stones talked to each other, and the Life Stone had been a part of him for so long that he could understand them too.

Ser Brienne ordered the swordsmen to form up with her on top of the main gate. She wasn't one for grand speeches, and even if she was, there was no time. "If this gate falls, we fall." The soldiers nodded and drew their swords. Brienne stood out in front of their line, so they could see their Commander was fighting with them, and so they couldn't see the fear in her eyes as the first wights crept over the battlements.

Arya joined Sandor and Beric on the other side of the broken wall, her new spear in hand.

"So nice of you to finally join us." Sandor grunted. "That Gendry lad's got some stamina..."

Arya pretended to glare at him until the first wights reached them. She spun her spear around her in a fluid motion, just like her water dancing teacher had shown her all those years ago. Any wights that came within three feet of her caught one end of her spear or the other and crumpled to the floor.

"Nice weapon." Beric shouted, decapitating a wight with his flaming sword.

"Thanks." She replied, stabbing another one through the jaw and kicking it away with her foot. "I've named it Sandor."

Sandor rolled his eyes so far back in his head it looked like he was warging for a second. "Of course you fuckin' did..."

The soldiers on the main gate fought bravely, but there were just too many of them. Brienne herself was pushed further and further back towards the edge of the wall, until eventually the wooden handrail behind her gave way and she fell, crashing down through the roof of the stables. The wights swarmed over the main gate and found the capstans, and moments later the huge oak doors started to creak open.


	11. The Long Night, Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who else went and watched Dark Phoenix just to see Sophie Turner f*ck some sh*t up?
> 
> Sorry this took so long, haven't had a lot of free time lately. Chapters should start pick up again now.

Winterfell's gates creaked open and the remaining wights poured through the gap and into the castle. Rhaegal, too injured to fly and on his last reserves of fire breath, backed away towards the far end of the courtyard. The Lannister soldiers raised their shields against the incoming wights, and for a brief moment it seemed like that was all it would take to hold them back, but then an undead giant with a club the size of a person waded through the swarm of regular-sized wights and started smashing through their front line.

A trio of White Walkers on horseback followed the giant through the gate. The first led a contingent of wights into the Godswood to kill Bran, whose beasts were still harassing their rearmost units outside the walls.

A second Walker commanded the wights in front of the Lannisters to lie down and form a ramp, which he rode up on his horse and leapt over their shield line. He landed in the middle of their formation and went to town with his mace, which could shatter any regular metal that it touched. Seeing their fellow soldiers' weapons and armour exploding upon contact with the Walker's mace, the Lannisters began to fall back towards the other end of the courtyard.

Jon took Longclaw out of its scabbard and handed it to Tony. "Stick him with the pointy end."

Tony nodded, taking Longclaw and charging forward into the retreating Lannister lines, his red-and-gold colours mixing with theirs as he pushed his way through. "Hey! What's with the horse?" He shouted to get the Walker's attention. "I though you guys were called White _Walkers_?" Not one of his best, but the Walker did turn to look at him. He ducked under a head-height mace swing and stabbed the Walker in the chest, shattering him to pieces. His horse, the giant, and hundreds of wights collapsed as the spell that animated them was broken.

The third Walker, upon seeing this, commanded his wights to attack Tony. Tony's armour protected him from their attacks, and many of them died from the dragonglass shards sticking out of it, but without a power supply he had no super-strength or additional weapons, so he was quickly buried under a mountain of dead and undead bodies. The rest of the wights diverted around him to reach the last of the Lannister forces, who were clustered around Rhaegal near the end of the courtyard.

\---

"You're a good man, Theon."

The Ironborn were all dead, and the victorious wights stood and waited as their commander dismounted to approach Bran on foot. Theon threw his boarding axe, and the Walker caught it by the handle and let it fall to the floor as he advanced. Theon raced forward towards one of the dead Ironborn, grabbing a second axe and charging forward with it, but again the Walker was too fast for him, gripping his wrist mid-swing with ice-cold fingers and lifting him off his feet. The Walker drew his sword and Theon braced for the final blow, when suddenly a dragonglass spear pierced them both. No, not a spear, Theon realised as he looked down between them. A gigantic bolt. As the White Walker shattered into tiny pieces and the wights in the Godswood collapsed, Theon fell to his knees, the tip of the bolt buried deep in his stomach. He tilted his head up at the Old Tower, where Jaime had just fired the Scorpion.

\---

Sansa and Tyrion watched in horror as the wights swarmed all over the courtyard. A dark streak of liquid ran down the window pane in front of them.

"Is that blood?" Tyrion asked, pulling Sansa away from the glass.

"It can't be, there's nobody above us." She said, just as the streak stopped behaving like blood, and started behaving more like an angry red sludge sort of thing. It spread out across the window, distorting the lead and cracking the glass as it tried to force its way inside. Sansa and Tyrion turned to flee, but the red sludge broke through the window and poured through the air towards them, and into Sansa, causing her to collapse.

Tyrion held her on the floor, looking rapidly from her face to the broken window. "Sansa, can you hear me?"

Sansa opened her eyes, and he helped her to her feet. She felt different, like she was dreaming. She looked at her hands and saw the network of cracks in her skin pulsating with orange light. Her fiery red hair flowed around her as if she was underwater, and her irises glittered with starlight. 

Tyrion took a step back. "Sansa?"

She looked at Tyrion for a moment. He was scared of her. Something inside her told her he was right to be. She walked back to the broken window overlooking the courtyard, and stepped right through it, rushing down to the ground and landing with a shockwave of dark red energy. She looked calmly at the wights invading her castle, and with a dismissive wave of her hand, turned all them to liquid. The Army of the Dead melted down into the cracks between the cobbles, under the power of the Reality Stone. The third and final White Walker threw an icy spear at Sansa from across the courtyard. She caught it, set it alight in her hand, and threw it right back, shattering him.

Up above, the Night King watched his last lieutenant fall. He dove towards Winterfell to obliterate Sansa with dragonfire.

Sansa turned as the dragon-wight swept over the castle wall. Before it reached her, it opened its jaws wide, and as the glow of blue flames came creeping up its black throat, a bolt from the Old Tower pierced its chest.

Its body came apart in mid-air, the loose pieces carried forward by their momentum into the foot of the Old Tower. The ancient structure lurched sickeningly forwards, before crashing down in a cloud of debris and dust.

\---

In the library, Loki and the others felt the room shake as the Old Tower crumbled. "Well," He looked at the Space Stone in his hand. The damn thing hadn't worked since Tony had used it on top of the Keep, "It's now or never." He told it.

\---

In the courtyard, the Night King rose to his feet, having bailed out and landed a safe distance from the now-collapsed tower. He looked around at the molten remnants of his wights, and the scattered piles of icicles that were once his lieutenants. He turned to glare at Sansa, drawing his spear from his back.

As he did so, a blue portal opened behind him and Loki stepped out, with the Casket of Ancient Winters in one hand and the Space Stone in the other. "Looking for these?" He asked playfully. As the Night King turned round to swipe at him, he leapt back, flashing his signature mischievous grin. But then he looked the Night King up and down, and a look of shock quickly overtook his features. "You're a _Jotun_." He breathed.

Allspeak carried Loki's words across the language barrier effortlessly, and the Night King stopped in his tracks. He looked at the Casket in Loki's hands, and the hands themselves, which, far from being harmed by the intense cold, were beginning to turn pale blue like his own. "So are you." He said.

Loki could only look on in horror as a Valyrian steel sword swung down at the Jotun from behind, splitting his collarbone and slicing through to the middle of his chest. The Night King's mouth opened in surprise and he sank to his knees. A moment later, he shattered into glittering ice.


	12. The Long Night, Part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't believe I was stuck on like, one sentence, for over a month...

Ser Brienne of Tarth pulled Oathkeeper away from the empty air where the Night King had been moments earlier. Without a word, she turned and ran towards the remains of the Old Tower, stray pieces of straw dancing along her wake. "I need some help over here." She shouted, tugging at a wooden beam that could have been part of the tower or part of the Scorpion, but either way it was pinned under the rest of the rubble and wouldn't budge. She tried the smaller bits of rubble, throwing them behind her without looking, tears starting to well in her eyes. "Jaime Lannister, you will not be killed by a bunch of  _old bricks_ , do you hear me?" She reached for another stone, but it moved without her touching it, and she froze. "Jaime?" Somehow, the stone began to  _float,_  upwards into the air, as if lifted by an invisible force. Others followed it, and soon Brienne had to scramble backwards, away from the shifting stones. As she backed away in wonder, she saw her Lady Sansa, arms outstretched, hands aglow with some kind of magic, carefully lifting the rubble away from Jaime's broken body. Brienne ran forward and gathered Jaime up in her arms. His golden hand had been crushed beyond recognition under the Scorpion, but when he opened his eyes, and saw Brienne looking down at him, he broke into a tired smile.

His smile faded when saw Sansa standing behind her. "Theon." He breathed.

Ignoring the burning feeling behind her eyes, Sansa strode into the Godswood and found Theon lying on the ground, the Scorpion bolt still lodged in his stomach. She knelt beside him in the snow, "Theon? Can you hear me?" But he did not answer. She reached forward and brushed his hair out of his eyes. He was already growing cold. She put her hand over his heart, willing the Aether to help him. The burning sensation grew stronger, spreading down into her chest cavity, but she ignored it. What was pain? She and Theon had both suffered more than most would ever know. And he needed her now.

After a few seconds, her hands started to glow again. The bolt began to move, slowly backing out of Theon's body, the damaged flesh behind it returning to the before-state in its wake. Sansa gasped as the Aether pulsed through her veins like blood, but she didn't let up, not until the colour returned to Theon's face and he awoke, gasping for air. As he turned to look at her, the searing pain finally overtook her, blocking out her senses, her thoughts, and she collapsed. The snow beneath them began to melt and freeze over again again in places as Sansa fought to stay in control of the Aether. Theon shouted for help.

\---

Tony marvelled as Sansa freed Jaime from the rubble of the Old Tower, then he went up to Loki, nudging his shoulder casually. "Hey bud, you okay?" The God of Mischief had been staring at the Night King's glittering remains. "He say something to you? Just before..." Tony motioned with Longclaw, mimicking Brienne's killing blow.

Loki turned towards him, his eyes wet with tears. "He was a Jotun, like me."

Tony had no idea what to say, so he rested an armoured hand on Loki's shoulder, as all across Winterfell the Army of the Living cheered for their unlikely victory against the Night King. When the noise died down, they heard Theon shouting for help in the Godswood.

Loki and Tony and ran in, closely followed by Brienne, who had left Jaime in the care of the Lannisters' physician.

They found Theon cradling Sansa's head in his hands. "She's hurt!"

Bran spoke up from beneath the weirwood. "She has the Aether inside her. It's burning her up." 

"I've seen this happen before." Loki stepped in, gesturing for the others to stay back. Jane Foster had managed to survive for days before the Aether was removed, but she hadn't been tapping into its power. Sansa likely had mere minutes before it consumed her entirely. Loki crouched down beside her and Theon, unsure of what to do, until he felt a warm hand on his shoulder.

"Move away." Said Melisandre.

Loki stepped back as the Red Priestess knelt beside Theon and Sansa in the snow. She took off her jewelled choker and placed it on Sansa's neck. Two things then happened simultaneously: Melisandre appeared to age rapidly into a white-haired crone, and the offending Aether flowed out of Sansa and into the glowing red stone on her choker. Mellisandre gently lifted one of Sansa's eyelids. Her irises were no longer glowing. The priestess looked up at the others. "The Substance alone is dangerous, the Vessel alone is weak. Together, they complete each other. The whole is worth more than the sum of its parts." She said, laying down in the snow beside Sansa. Her duty now fulfilled, she expired as the sun began to rise.

Loki took Sansa's wrist in his hand and held it, sensing for any lingering traces of magic. "She's stable." He confirmed. He looked at the bolt next to Theon. "She healed you, didn't she?" Theon nodded. "The effects of the Reality Stone only last within its proximity. You can't leave her side until we figure out a way to heal you permanently, do you understand?" Theon nodded again.

Brienne gently lifted Sansa up and carried her into the Keep, with Theon, Arya and Jon following close behind. In the Godswood, Loki opened up a portal to the library, to save Bran the indignity having to be carried up the stairs.

"You should see about making Winterfell more wheelchair accessible." Loki said once they were inside.

"Or you could give me the Space Stone, once Thanos is defeated. Then I could come and go as I pleased."

"How..."

"I'm the Three-Eyed Raven."

Loki nodded as if he understood what that meant. He turned to leave, but the Space Stone wouldn't respond, refusing to allow him a quick exit from this conversation.

"The Night King was one of your people." Bran said.

Loki paused, then nodded. "I don't know how that is even possible."

"Jotunheim. Asgard. Earth. What connects them?"

"...Yggdrasil." Loki murmured.  _The World Tree_.

"There were many more trees like Yggdrasil, long ago. A whole  _forest_  of inter-connecting worlds, across every galaxy in the universe. The Children of the Forest maintained the world-trees, and this was their home planet.

"Then, two Convergences ago, a group of Humans crossed into this world from Earth. They waged war against the Children for control of this planet, and in response, the Children created the Jotuns to fight for them. But soon the Jotuns grew too powerful for the Children to control.

"Much later, the Jotun King Laufey tried to invade Earth, but the Asgardians, ever hungry for the glory of battle, defended the humans, and banished Laufey to Jotunheim. Laufey's firstborn son, Nottrekr, declared himself King, and swore to destroy the humans of this planet, and every planet."

\---

Back down in the courtyard, the physician cleared Jaime to return to his quarters and rest. He'd broken a finger on his good hand, but otherwise it was just cuts and bruises. He'd been very lucky.

On his way to the Keep, he spotted the pile of icy shards that had once been the Night King. Without warning, Cersei's voice echoed around his head.  _Search his body for a stone or jewel he carries, and bring it back to King's Landing at once._

He looked around to see if anyone was watching, then went over to the spot. He winced in pain as he bent down, brushing the icicles around with his good hand until he found one that was unlike the others; round and smooth and crystal-clear. He slipped it into his pocket and carried on into the Keep.


	13. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

Ser Jaime stumbled into bed at sunrise but didn't sleep a wink, despite how long it'd been since he'd last slept, and despite the dose of milk of the poppy the physician had given him as he reset his broken finger.

Cersei had only sent him North so he could take Winterfell while Daenerys and the Starks were vulnerable. But then, more than a fortnight after he'd left, she'd changed her mind - for a jewel? He held the smooth little crystal up to the ray of light shining in through his bedroom window. He had to admit that it was quite pretty. Too big to be set into a ring, he imagined it would look nice as the centrepiece of a necklace. But not worth losing a war over.

It was inevitable. All three armies had suffered great losses during the Long Night, but Daenerys still had two of her dragons, and Sansa Stark was apparently a very powerful sorceress now, unless he'd somehow hallucinated that part of the battle. As long as the Lady of Winterfell and the Dragon Queen remained allies, their victory was all but guaranteed.

Jaime tilted the crystal to and fro in the light, watching as the light refracted within cycled through the colours of the rainbow. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. Cersei would sooner see King's Landing razed to the ground before she'd give up the Iron Throne. Purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red. A million people lived and worked in King's Landing, give or take. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. On the Gold Road, he'd seen first-hand what Daenerys' dragonfire could do to human beings. Purple, blue, green, yellow, orange...

The Stone slipped from his hand when he heard a knock at the door. He put it back in his pocket as Ser Brienne asked if she could come in.

"It's not locked." He said, his words coming out a little bit slurred from the painkiller. All thoughts of Cersei and plots and war and politics flew from his mind the moment Brienne came in.

She brought a chair to his bedside and sat down. "How are you feeling?"

"Like a building collapsed on me." He replied glumly. Brienne nodded sympathetically and reached out, gently stroking his hair. Jaime relaxed under her touch, wondering when she'd realise there was basically nothing wrong with him. Never, he hoped. "How is Lady Sansa?"

"She's still asleep. Theon is watching over her."

"Theon's alive?"

"Sansa healed him, somehow." She sighed. "I don't know. She has these... _Powers_ , now. It was her who lifted the tower off you."

"That really happened..."

Brienne nodded. "I overheard the new Stark and his odd friend talking about magic stones."

_Like the one in your pocket? The one Cersei wants?_

Somehow, no matter what, Jaime's thoughts always circled back to her. Olenna was right. Cersei would be the death of him.

"The Maester told me about your finger, by the way. You're very lucky you weren't more hurt."

_Damnit._

But Brienne kept stroking his hair, then his cheek, then she ran a tentative thumb over his lips. They stared at each other for a long moment, then suddenly Jaime sat bolt upright and Brienne leaned forward and they shared a passionate kiss.

An hour later, after Brienne had left, Jaime took out the crystal and held it to the light again.

He didn't much care for the stone itself, magic or otherwise. But Cersei wanted it, and that was enough. He would bring it to her, just like she asked. And then, once they were alone...

 _Olenna had been wrong_ , Jaime decided. Cersei wouldn't be the death of him. He would be the death of her.

 


	14. Euron Greyjoy's Day Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Euron goes on a jaunt about King's Landing, experiencing the wonders of the Capital in a whole new way.

Euron wasn't having a great day.

It had been two weeks since he'd told a captive Yara of his plans to bed Queen Cersei, and while his niece's fortunes had much improved since then, Euron's hadn't.

It was true, he'd never propositioned a Queen before. He imagined there were all sorts of intricate rules and rituals surrounding courting someone of that calibre in peacetime, but this wasn't peacetime. He'd brought her a fleet of ships. He'd brought her the woman who'd killed her only daughter. He'd brought her an army of mercenaries to replace the one she sent North. He'd even brought her  _elephants_. But still, she'd insisted they would only be wed after the war was won.

He'd considered fitting the Silence with one of Qyburn's Scorpions, sailing out to Dragonstone and trying his luck against the Targaryen girl's dragons, but they'd be able to spot his fleet a mile away from the air, and he'd never be able to hit a moving target like that on his first try.

As he disembarked his ship in the Royal Dockyards, in the shadow of the Red Keep, he assessed his other options.

Option one: He could try going a bit more upmarket. The Lannisters were the richest family in Westeros, so perhaps if he turned up in a Lord's finery instead of his usual rugged leather ensemble, he might make more headway? He could wear the jewelled dagger he'd stolen off a Meereenese merchant, instead of his sea-rusted old axe? Maybe even have a bath?

No, he decided as he climbed the steps up into King's Landing. The Kingslayer spent his whole life in soft silks and shining armour, and she sent him to die under a sea of dead men. Golden lions were _so_ 304 AC.

Option two: He could try being a bit sluttier. Unbutton his shirt a bit more, maybe wear some tighter pants? Crawl on all fours up the steps to the Iron Throne, in slow-motion, lips pursed?

Ridiculous. Option three? His thoughts were interrupted by a gaggle of street urchins in his path, squabbling intensely over some scrap of food they'd found. He pushed the nearest one, a boy of about ten, out of his way, and was about to do the same to the next in his path when he saw what they'd found.

An emerald. Huge and bright green, almost glowing.

He grabbed the boy holding it and put a knife to his throat. "That would make a nice present for our dear Queen, wouldn't it?" The boy dropped the gem in fright and Euron grabbed it out of the mud before one of the others tried to make off with it. As the urchins scampered off, Euron cleaned the stone on his sleeve and admired it in the light. Flawless. Probably nicked from one of the houses in the merchant's district. Oh well. It was his now.

He carried on up into the Red Keep, a noted skip in his step now that he had something to present to the Queen. There was no doubt she would once again turn him down, but the rejection didn't bother him. On the contrary, it would make it all the sweeter when she finally gave in.

He swaggered into the Great Hall and paused before the Throne.

"Your Grace."

"Lord Greyjoy."

Euron raised an eyebrow at the formality. It was only the three of them, and he was sure Ser Gregor didn't mind. "We _are_ on first name terms, are we not?"

"What do you want, Euron?"

Answering honestly could lose him his head, so he continued his careful game. "I want to give you a gift. A token of my everlasting loyalty to you." He reached into his pocket and drew out the emerald, holding it out in front of him. It shone in the firelight, and felt a little warm in his hand, but he thought nothing of it. Cersei seemed to think nothing of it either, though her eyes remained on the gem as he continued. "I thought it matched your eyes."

Cersei didn't respond. She just kept peering down her nose at the emerald, an unreadable expression fixed on her face.

Euron started to get the feeling she recognised it. Perhaps it had already been reported stolen? He quickly prepared an "I fought a band of jewel thieves and recovered this lost gem for you" story, while the silence between them slowly went from awkward to hilarious. For him, at least.

Euron laughed to himself as he tossed the gem in the air. "Sometimes I wonder what it is you want from me. I've given you justice, an army... The Iron Fleet. My heart is nearly..." He trailed off unconsciously as one of the flaming braziers caught his eye.

The flames were frozen, mid-flare.

"... Broken."

He looked back at Cersei sitting on the Throne. He stepped to one side, and her gaze didn't follow him.

He looked at the stone in his hand. It hadn't been shining in the firelight after all. It was glowing, all on its own.

Euron looked around at the empty Great Hall. The air was completely still. There were no faint noises coming from the adjoining rooms. No breeze through the windows. The only sounds that remained were the beat of his heart and his now too-loud breathing.

Cautiously, he ascended the steps to the Throne at an angle, not wanting to stand in Cersei's gaze for fear he might become frozen too. When he reached the Throne he waved a hand in front of her. A grin split his face in two.

He climbed onto the Throne, sitting across Cersei's lap, his ankles dangling over the armrest. He reached over and took Cersei's crown off her head, placing it on his own at a jaunty angle, and reclined, sighing. "I could get used to this..." The Great Hall was perfectly silent.

About ten seconds later, he was bored. He got off the Throne and went to admire his reflection in Ser Gregor's breastplate. "Not bad." He mused, straightening his crown. Without warning, he gave Ser Gregor a rough shove. It would've knocked a regular, unfrozen man off his feet, but the Mountain simply tilted backwards, and became still again as soon as Euron stopped touching him. Euron giggled at the absurdity of it. Next, he went over to Cersei and pried her pale hand off the Throne's armrest. He curled her fingers around a cylindrical space, as if she was holding a sword.

Euron quickly concluded that it wasn't quite the same as the real - unfrozen - thing, and after a little while longer he grew bored again. He bid adieu to Cersei and Ser Gregor, and left the Red Keep to go down into King's Landing, where the smallfolk were frozen in the midst of their daily lives. He ducked under a plank carried by two workmen, and sauntered along the street. He swiped a coin purse from a merchant chatting outside a tavern, but quickly decided that petty theft was beneath him. He placed the purse in the hand of the man talking to the merchant, and ducked into the tavern. He put a pickled egg into everyone's ale, then when he tried to drink from the tap behind the bar the liquid wouldn't flow, so he took out his axe and cut the spigots off all of the barrels.

He passed the alleyway where he'd found the magic stone. The group of street urchins he'd met were now being accosted by a patrol of Goldcloaks. _God, what if one of them had found this thing_? He thought, glancing at the gem in his palm. He thanked the Drowned God it had found its way into greater hands than theirs.

Carefully, he removed the sword from one guard's scabbard, placed it in the man's hand, and then slowly drove it through the neck of the guard standing next to him. He giggled to himself, imagining the man's shock and horror when time started to move again.

He carried on along the road, tripping pedestrians up and moving things around to be a general nuisance. Eventually, he came to the merchant's district, where the central street was lined with the mansions of those who had made their fortune in trade. He grinned. It was every thief's dream to find a house full of valuables with open doors and no guards, and now he had a whole row of them to explore and plunder at his leisure! He vaulted over the low wall circling the first house, his free hand holding his crown in place as he did so. He strolled past the frozen guards in the front garden and squeezed through the half-open front door into the atrium, where a middle-aged woman was throwing an expensive-looking vase down the stairs at a pair of red-faced, half-naked men. The eldest daughter of the household was the one opening the door with one hand and sipping at her wine with the other, as her father and his boyfriend fled the house. Euron nodded to the daughter as if he'd just been invited inside, and took a look around.

He'd raided houses like this before, but usually he and his crew were in and out so quickly he never had the chance to appreciate the places they were robbing. There were marble pillars holding up the double-height ceiling, and bright tapestries on all the walls. All the furniture and shelves were mahogany. Gold chandeliers hung from the ceilings in each room, which were frescoed with depictions of the Seven, as well as trees and animals.

On the mantelpiece in the dining room, a dragon egg took pride of place.

Euron had been thinking of heading upstairs to raid some jewellery boxes, but he knew right away that the egg would be the single most valuable thing in the house. The decorative gold sleeve it was sitting in was worth more than a ship full of spices or silk. He grabbed the egg (and its stand) as he passed through, heading into the lush rear gardens. In the sunlight, he removed the jewel-encrusted sleeve. It needed no decoration, it was beautiful all on its own. A different kind of beautiful. Deep crimson scales, like a wave of blood washing over interlocking shields. He imagined himself riding the dragon contained within, laying waste to an entire army. Two armies. If a teen in exile could become Queen of the Seven Kingdoms with a pair of dragons, a man like _him_  could be King of the Known World.

Such a shame they only hatched for those white-haired freaks. He went to throw it away, but as it left his hand it stopped and hung in the air in front of him. Euron shrugged and left it there, carrying on further into the garden. A hummingbird caught his eye, its pearlescent wings shimmering in the warm air as it sipped nectar from a flower. Hummingbird wings moved so fast in real-time that their beauty was invisible to the human eye. Euron crouched down to get a closer look. After a few seconds, the stone in his pocket shivered, and he took it out to see what was wrong. Its magical glow seemed to be fading, and beyond where it lay in his palm, the hummingbird's wings were slowly but unmistakably starting to move again.

Euron rose to his feet and turned towards the Red Keep. It was half a mile back to the Great Hall.

He didn't know how, he guessed it had something to do with the stone, but he knew that the flow of time was creeping in at the edges, and that if he was fast enough, he could still get back to the Keep before Cersei realised he'd gone anywhere. And he'd promised her a gift. He sprinted around the side of the house, grabbing the dragon egg as he passed it, and vaulted over the wall. He dashed up the street, losing precious time having to push through frozen crowds of smallfolk. He passed the alleyway where a stream of blood was just starting to spurt from the neck of the Goldcloak he'd stabbed. He ran on harder, glancing up at the Red Keep towering over the city. Past the tavern, the ale barrels he'd taken his axe to starting to spill from their broken spigots in a line, one after the other in his wake.

Up, up the steps of the castle and into the Great Hall, where he bounded back to the place he'd been standing in and held up the dragon egg in place of the stone.

As the room came to life again around Euron, and Cersei blinked in surprise at the dragon egg in his hand, the Mountain crashed to the floor, jolting Cersei in her seat.

"I know. Overwhelming, isn't it?" Euron smiled as Ser Gregor picked himself back up. "Or did you just slip on something?"

Cersei stared at Ser Gregor for an answer, but underneath the helmet he was just as confused as she was.

Euron placed a tentative foot on the first step up to the Throne, watching as Ser Gregor tensed and Cersei waved for him to stand down. He ascended the steps and placed the dragon egg into her hands, even daring to brush his fingers over hers as he let go.

Cersei registered the not-so-subtle move he had made, but she was more interested in the dragon egg. It was a beautiful crimson, her family's colour. There were small scratches on the bottom where Euron had unceremoniously removed its stand.

In her youth, Cersei had been made to learn all the noble and minor Houses of Westeros. Of the dozens of minor Houses that served her own, House Solent was the youngest. Originally a family of merchants from Lannisport, they had become rich shipping refined gold for Cersei's grandfather, Tytos. After decades of close business ties, they were eventually created a minor House, to serve the Lannisters more directly. As a symbol of their new House's devotion to House Lannister, the newly-created Lord Solent acquired a crimson dragon egg from Essos, and had it mounted in a solid gold stand to serve as their family heirloom. After the gold dried up and Joffrey was crowned King, House Solent's heir had moved to King's Landing to set up a new shipping business in the East, and to further solidify their ties to the Iron Throne.

She wondered if Lord Solent would come whinging to her about his missing egg at some point, or if he'd try to keep quiet that it had been stolen.

For now, she thanked Euron for his 'gift', and retired for the night, waving away his offer of company with more tact than it deserved - in the interest of appearing more cooperative.

Half way up the steps to her chambers, she stopped dead.

Slowly, she reached her hand up towards the top of her gilded head.

Her crown. It was on backwards.


End file.
